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Weekly Fraser Valley Sport Fishing Column

Weekly Fraser Valley Sport fishing column for July 8 to 15, 2013

The red springs or kings, depending on which side of the border you call home, are open in the Vedder River, while the Fraser is scheduled to open on the 27th. Whether you call them springs or kings, the chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus Tshawytscha), is a prized catch for many west coast anglers. The largest of these fish often referred to as tyee, range in weights from 30 to 126 pounds.

These great fish have been attracting the interest of trophy anglers and governments as far back as 1846; when Brittan ceded the Oregon Territory over these same fish. As the story goes the decision was made after Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen's brother declared the region was not worth fighting over because the salmon would not take a fly. Twenty six years later in 1872, Spencer Fullerton Baird hired Livingstone Stone to build the first recorded west coast salmon hatchery and raise chinook salmon to rebuild the decimated Atlantic Salmon Rivers of the eastern US. Then in 1896, twenty four years after Baird hired Stone; Sir Richard Musgrave wrote, in the British sporting magazine "The Field," about catching tyee up to 70 pounds, out of a dugout canoe in the wilds of British Columbia. The following year Musgrave began challenging adventures from around the world to join him on tyee expeditions and all eyes focused on our coast.

Chinook salmon are one of our west coast heritage fish and they are in the river now. Can you catch them by fly fishing? Sure you can, I've done it, and if I can do it you can too. My personal best; fly caught tyee weighed in at 36 pounds and believe me that was enough. Now if you are looking for the record you will have to beat Grant Martinsen; who set the current fly caught world record with a 71.5 pound tyee from the lower Rogue River in 2002.